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Saint John Chrysostom is almost the only Father of the Church about whom his contemporaries and later generations wrote a significant number of biographies. So far, we have more than eight (Byzantine) biographies. Some of these represent a kind of reworking of an earlier version, though not, of course, slavish imitation of the original. In these texts, we occasionally come across information which is entirely new and sometimes significant. How far this information is trustworthy is something which research will determine. It may well be that some of this information will never be confirmed. Apart from anything else, there’s a suspicion that some of it was included by the biographer principally in order to make a good point. When describing ...

“Who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped” According to the Patristic Theology, the Ascension of Christ is inherently connected to the descent of the Holy Spirit. Evidently, the Comforter’s coming is an essential continuation of Christ’s work on earth, as a part of His divine plan for the salvation of humanitymn. By taking the human nature, Christ does not just complete the divine plan of His Father, but also continues to act and to attract the unique human hypostases where He entered as a Forerunner. Read more

Who is Jesus Christ, who is both God and human? What in him is God and what is human? How do we recognize the God in him and the human? What did God grant us in the person of Jesus? All of this is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of Truth’. In other words, he reveals the truth about Jesus, about the God in him and the human being and about what he bestowed upon us. And this infinitely surpasses what our eyes have seen, our ears have heard and our hearts have ever felt. Through his incarnate life on earth, Jesus established his theanthropic body, the Church, and, through this, prepares the world for the advent, ...

‘…each one heard their own language being spoken’ (Acts 2, 6). As a result of this event, some 3,000 people believed and were baptized. The grace of the Holy Spirit made the word of God comprehensible and accessible to the souls of the believers and bore immediate, abundant fruit. Today we celebrate Pentecost, we sing beautiful hymns, full of meaning at the Kneeling Service at Vespers, we preach wonderful sermons about the Holy Spirit, but we also fear the Holy Spirit. Yes, that’s right. We fear him. Because the Holy Spirit has the potential to transform a religious body into the living Church of Jesus Christ. I wonder at those people who insist that the faithful shouldn’t understand what’s said in Church.  ...

Always bear the Lord your God in mind. Fear only him. Forget neither him nor his commandments.  He will then give you the strength to do his will. Because he asks nothing else of you but that you be devoted to him, love him and walk in the paths of all his commandments. Saint Gregory the Theologian

People are shrouded in the darkness of ignorance. They don’t know God, themselves or the enemies of salvation. So it’s easy for them to rob their spiritual home, their soul, of its spiritual riches. Saint John Kronstadtskij

In our prayers, we often ask God, Our Lady or the Saints for something and when we don’t receive it we think God’s being indifferent towards us. But that’s not the way things really are, because there are instances when          the Lord doesn’t give us what we ask for, in order to save us from some greater harm. Dimitrios Panagopoulos

After fifty days from our Lord’s glorious Resurrection our Holy Orthodox Church celebrates Pentecost.  This feast day is very important for all mankind, because it is the birthday of our Church.  It is the day on which the Church, the Body of Christ, begins to function as the living organization in which one finds salvation.  It is the day, on which Christ’s promise, that He will send the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity, is fulfilled.  It is the day, when the Holy Spirit appeared as tongues of fire and entered into the hearts of the Holy Apostles and the rest of the disciples opening their mind of understanding.  It is the day, when God called all mankind to ...

Don’t do anything by being guided by your own will, but feel the presence of God wherever you find yourself. Do everything as though you were standing before God, not before other people. Sain Andronik of the Monastery of Glinsk

Faith and availing ourselves of the sacrament of Holy Communion provide us with the greatest gifts and renew us. Saint Isaak the Syrian

The season after Easter is called ‘Pentikostario’. After the victory over death which was ushered in by Christ’s Resurrection, we go on to the great feast of Pentecost. Fifty days after Easter, we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit onto Christ’s disciples and, through them, onto all of us. This ‘descent’ had been foretold by Christ while he was yet on earth. The feast developed over time. Initially, it was agricultural; later it ‘commemorated’ the historical event of the Testament; then it finally became the feast of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which inaugurated the new Testament on earth. Along with the Passover and Tabernacles, it was the third great feast of the Jews, at which every believer was obliged ...

You’re a wayfarer, my brother. Be careful not to go astray. Don’t go off to the left or the right. Always tread the royal road. You’re a spiritual athlete. Mind yourself, in case you break the rules, because nobody gains the crown of victory unless they compete in accordance with them. Elder Cleopa

‘Those who love a little, give little; those who love a lot, give more; and those who love a great deal, what can they give? They give themselves’. Christ and joy Christ wants to spread joy and is pleased by doing so, by enriching his faithful with joy. He wishes ‘that your joy may be complete’. This is our religion. This is where we should go. Christ is our Paradise. What’s Paradise? It’s Christ. Paradise starts from here. It’s exactly the same. Those who experience Christ here on earth, experience Paradise. It’s just as I’m telling you. This is right, it’s true, believe me. Our task is to try and find a way to enter the light of Christ, not merely to ...

Those who truly know themselves have made a start at acquiring humility, because they’ve seen the extent of their weakness and also the cesspit which is hidden within their soul. ‘Broken and contrite’ and in despair over themselves, they’ve then turned to God, ceaselessly begging his mercy. Saint Dimitri of Rostov

We can’t acquire pure prayer except through repentance. When we repent, that is, when we cleanse ourselves of every sinful passion, we gradually become able to enter the divine light. Saint Sophrony, Essex

As we move from the feast of the Ascension to that of Pentecost, we’re essentially progressing from the feast of the glorification of human nature to that of our illumination. Between these feasts, the Church inserts the commemoration of the 1st Ecumenical Synod, which convened in Nicaea in Bithynia. The Sunday of the Holy Fathers is a feast which is primarily concerned with the truth of the faith. Not with faith as an ideology, as a theoretical evolvement approached and managed by the brain, through reason, or by memorization. Rather, with the faith in its real dimension, its essential form, the very truth. Eternal life as knowledge The Gospel reading is from the beginning of Christ’s prayer before he went to the ...

Complaining against God isn’t merely criticism of him; it’s also condemnation People often ask why, for what reason, the Lord God sends them sorrows and very onerous trials. It’s extremely important that all Christians should understand that sorrows are sent in accordance with God’s will and are always for our benefit and salvation. Most often, in fact, they aren’t sent as punishment for sins, but rather so that we can realign our paths and our hearts. Or they may be the answer to requests we’ve made to God. People frequently expect God to make what they ask for in their prayers happen in the way they themselves think is best. But God often replies to their supplications in a way that’s ...

The Sunday of the Holy Fathers, which our Church celebrates during the time of Pentecost, is dedicated to the memory of the Holy and God-bearing Fathers of the 1st Ecumenical Synod, in Nicaea, at which Saint Athanasios the Great and Saint Spyridon the Wonder-Worker were present and gave their testimony on behalf of the faith. In the Holy Spirit, the Synod expressed the received faith of the Church and formulated its dogmatic teaching concerning the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son and Word of God, Jesus Christ, who is both God and human. The significance of the 1st Ecumenical Synod lies in the fact that it defended the faith against the heretical teaching of Arius and his supporters, who ...

Ascension For forty days after the Resurrection, the Lord Jesus was ‘being seen of His disciples’. He was gladdening the hearts of His disciples with His Presence and initiating them into the mysteries of the Kingdom. Christ appeared to them and opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. At the same time, the Apostles were living with such tension of prayer in His Presence, that His words were engraved in their heart and in their memory. Although the Lord had promised them that He would not leave them orphans, He was taken up into Heaven on the fortieth day. The Ascension is the final event in the earthly life of Christ. This feast bears a beautiful radiance, because when the Lord ascended ...